A solar-powered marine litter cleaning drone that cleans up floating rubbish in canals, ports and estuaries has been launched by Navtek Naval Technologies in Istanbul.

“Rivers constitute critical pathways of transport of litter from land into the sea,” says a 2022 report by the European Environment Agency. “Over 600 million floating items, corresponding to almost 3,400 tonnes of litter, are discharged by European rivers into the sea annually. The Mediterranean Sea receives the largest fraction of discharged litter.”